The Everyday Jayne: Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart

This weekend I had the opportunity to get creative in the kitchen again! On Saturday we had dinner with friends and I ~~had to~~ got to bring desert! If you know me very well at all, you will know that I felt like a kid in a candy store.

My first plan was tiramisu. The Pioneer Woman has a pretty straight forward looking recipe for this, but my plans were dashed when I went to Safeway with an ingredient list, and realized that our little town doesn't carry mascarpone cheese - the assistant manager didn't even know what it was. :/

Ryder accompanied me to pick up our Bountiful Basket and swing by Safeway on Friday night. It's incredible how freeing just managing one child is after having two from just a few months. Plus, it doesn't hurt that the Safeway bakery just so happens to give free cookies to children - best marketing move ever!

Then on Friday night, one of those new sponsored advertisements that Facebook has started including on my newsfeed showed a quick video of how to make Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart.

SOLD

It looked simple enough. Besides heavy whipping cream for the ganache, I had everything on hand already. The only tricky aspect was that it required 9 hours to make - with chilling each different layer.

First I made the chocolate crust. I think if I were to do it again though, I'd change it up and add more crushed nuts for texture. The recipe ends up tasting more like a chocolate pie crust.

This was my first time making caramel from scratch - also known as sugar, water, butter, and cream. Well, first and second. The first time I tried making the caramel, I got nervous and didn't let it simmer long enough. The result was a very creamy looking soup that didn't have any distant caramel flavour. The second time I cranked the heat and just let it work its own magic. Yum - no more store bought caramel sauce for me!

I added the caramel sauce to the cooled crust and let it chill for about 4 hours. By the time I pulled it out to add the ganache, the caramel was nice and hard.

I cheated on the chocolate ganache. The actual recipe called for bittersweet chocolate whipped with warm cream, but I didn't have just plain chocolate. What I did have was my favourite brand of chocolate EVER. Have you heard of Theo? It's based out of Seattle. I should warn you, it's ridiculously good. If you're ever in Seattle, call ahead and schedule a tour of their factory. It's well worth the $7 - and you'll sample all the chocolate a soul could want.

Anyhow, I just ended up using 2 bars of Sea Salt 70% Dark Chocolate with the cream - so I skipped the coarse salt garnish. It was salty enough.

Sorry, the lighting here isn't awesome. Nevertheless, it turned out. I'll warn you that it's very rich. I think most of it can be blamed on the extremely dark chocolate I used. A milker substitute would take care of that. But, with a nice steaming cup of black coffee, I'd say it turned out just about perfect.